Stripped of dignity?

Updated 2:34 pm, Monday, December 10, 2012

Gerald "Joe" Dickson, 72, in front of the Albany South Station Precinct on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012, in Albany, N.Y. Dickson was strip searched by Albany police two years ago after he was taken into custody for giving a ride to a drug dealer. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union)

Gerald "Joe" Dickson, 72, in front of the Albany South Station...

Gerald "Joe" Dickson, 72, in front of the Albany South Station Precinct on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012, in Albany, N.Y. Dickson was strip searched by Albany police two years ago after he was taken into custody for giving a ride to a drug dealer. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union)

Gerald "Joe" Dickson, 72, in front of the Albany South Station...

Gerald "Joe" Dickson, 72, in front of the Albany South Station Precinct on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012, in Albany, N.Y. Dickson was strip searched by Albany police two years ago after he was taken into custody for giving a ride to a drug dealer. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union)

Gerald Dickson lost his breath as he climbed the stairs inside an Albany police station three years ago. He has emphysema, but he was told to keep moving. He was uncertain why, at age 69 and with no criminal record, he was being led into a detective office in handcuffs.

Dickson wasn't under arrest, and he hadn't been read his rights. But he'd made the mistake, he said, of giving a ride to a drug dealer whose mother was a neighbor and an acquaintance.

After pulling over Dickson's car, detectives' interest was piqued by a bulge under his shirt, although Dickson told them what they'd discover — a bulging hernia from a botched surgery. In their third-floor detective room, they ordered him to strip off his clothes, bend over and expose all his private parts. No drugs or contraband were found.

Then he was allowed to leave. No apologies.

"They treated me like an animal," he said. "It was a traumatic thing for me. ... I love life. ... Nobody and nothing takes my joy and peace away, but they did, and I couldn't understand it, but it affected me."

Each year, hundreds of people are strip-searched by police departments across the region. Many of those searched are under arrest for drug charges, but only a fraction are found to be hiding drugs or other contraband.

A Times Union examination of public records found that many police agencies, including the State Police and numerous local departments, do not track how many strip searches they conduct or what "reasonable suspicion" justified them. Most officers also have had little or no training, other than being given a manual that includes a section on when and how to conduct a strip or cavity search, according to court records and interviews with several current and former police officers.

The Albany Police Department is one of the only agencies in the area that requires officers to keep track. In October, Chief Steven Krokoff opened his department's strip-search records and acknowledged that the number of searches — 655 since January 2009 — was "surprising."

Albany officers fill out a one-page form when they conduct a strip-search, which documents details such as the location of, and reasons for, the search, a practice that's been in use for more than five years. The records show that many of those searched are under arrest for drug charges, but only a fraction are found to be hiding drugs. The strip-searches are concentrated on suspects from the roughest parts of Albany, and some records indicate that their civil rights may have been violated.

The reports show Albany police regularly cite vague factors such as "baggy clothing" or "nervousness" for their suspicion that a person may be hiding drugs. In some cases, they strip-search someone found to be concealing a gun or knife during a pat-down. In other instances, walking out of a house where drugs have been sold is all it takes to be subjected to a strip-search. Numerous people charged with low-level violations such as loitering or trespassing are strip-searched if they were arrested in or near a suspected drug house.

The reports also indicate that Albany police routinely conduct strip-searches at locations other than a police station, usually while executing a search warrant. In fact, the records show 22 percent of the strip-searches took place at a private address where police often order anyone present to remove their clothing, even those not identified as suspects.

In November 2011, police wrote that the search of a 21-year-old woman was necessary because she was "inside the address during the execution of a search warrant and wearing bulky loose fitting clothing and was in close proximity to where a large quantity of crack cocaine was recovered." Nothing was found. and she was released with no charges.

Ronald Sullivan, a professor at Harvard Law School, calls such justifications a "slippery slope" because "it would permit strip-searches everywhere that drugs are found," he said. "There has to be some individualized reason to suspect there are secreted drugs on his or her person."

New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled against all-inclusive searches in 2010, finding that police cannot use location-specific warrants to search every person in a residence without probable cause to believe an individual is involved in criminal activity.

"A search warrant exists and is required not simply to permit, but to circumscribe, police intrusions," wrote Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman.

Officials in two agencies, the Hudson Police Department and Albany County Sheriff's Department, said they would take steps to change their policies as a result of the Times Union's inquiry, including documenting strip-searches. Schenectady Police Chief Mark Chaires declined repeated requests for comment on his department's strip-search policies. In Amsterdam, a city attorney and Mayor Ann Thane ignored Freedom of Information Law requests for information about their police department's strip-search practices, and both declined requests for comment.

Police officials in Troy said information about strip-searches is not documented in police reports in a way they can track. In Colonie, police officials said they document the circumstances of a strip-search only if contraband is found.

Meanwhile, data from the Albany County Sheriff's Department shows that nearly all the agency's strip searches over a two-year period were done by the controversial Drug Interdiction Unit, which was dismantled earlier this year by Sheriff Craig Apple. The records indicate the six-member DIU conducted 58 strip-searches in 2010 and 67 in 2011, as part of an informal policy in that unit to strip-search anyone arrested for a felony, which legal experts said is likely unconstitutional. The rest of the sheriff's department, including a patrol division and a criminal investigative unit, performed strip-searches on just two people during that same period.

In October, as the Times Union's request for data was pending, sheriff's officials issued an internal directive that a record of all strip-searches be forwarded to the Professional Standards Unit, including the location, circumstances and name of the officer conducting the search.

"Now we feel we have better control over it," Apple said. "We realized we had no tracking mechanism for strip-searches. ... I don't know the reason for so many strip-searches by that unit, but we've changed it and, again, that unit doesn't exist in our office anymore."

Albany police occasionally make physical contact with those being searched, their reports show, including forcibly removing drugs from defendants' rectums twice in 2010. A 2008 ruling by the Court of Appeals declared that police cannot remove drugs from a body cavity, even if they are visibly protruding, unless there are "exigent circumstances" or without first obtaining a search warrant.

Still, in Albany, strip-searching drug arrestees remains customary, even for people confronted in their homes by police. The reports show Albany police strip-searched numerous people who had marijuana delivered to their residence, although there's no indication why police suspected they would then have additional drugs hidden under their clothing in their own home.

Two Albany police officers interviewed for this story, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment, said that some officers routinely strip- search people because criminal charges can be elevated if drugs or contraband are found. They said a list of low-level charges, once known by the rank-and-file as the "dirty dozen," don't mandate that an officer attend a court proceeding or meet with a prosecutor, which would trigger a minimum of three hours overtime under the labor contract.

Some officers called the practice of adding charges "collars for dollars."

Albany reports indicate that most city strip-searches are conducted by the narcotics squad, known as the Community Response Unit, and also, before it was disbanded, the Strategic Deployment Unit. The SDU was a controversial patrol squad whose officers were encouraged to aggressively confront what they believed was suspicious activity in troubled neighborhoods.

Since 2009, records show Albany officers only discovered contraband hidden under the clothing of one in six people strip-searched, even though most were charged with felony drug crimes. The records also show that more than 10 percent were charged only with loitering or a minor violation and four percent of people strip-searched were released with no charges at all.

That was the case for Dickson, now 72, who sued the city and the police department after he was strip-searched in July 2009. The police said they had good reason to place Dickson in custody. Dickson had given a ride that day to Aliem Shabazz, who was under surveillance at the time for crack-cocaine sales. As undercover officers watched, Shabazz climbed out of Dickson's car and handed another man a $40 piece of crack that Shabazz had concealed in his mouth.

Dickson said he didn't ask Shabazz why he needed a ride and told police that he had no idea Shabazz was making a drug sale that day.

At the detective office, officers "asked him to lift up his genitals and turn around, bend at the waist and spread his buttocks apart so we could visually look inside between his butt cheeks," Detective Brian Vennard testified in a deposition taken as part of the lawsuit filed by Dickson's attorneys, Gennaro Calabrese and Terence L. Kindlon.

During the deposition, Vennard, who had the department's second-highest number of strip-searches during a four-year period, testified that he was suspicious of Dickson, in part, because of the bulge in his stomach that turned out to be a hernia.

Vennard also testified that, like other officers, he was issued a strip-search policy in his manual "a few years ago" and "I don't even know if there was a policy before that." He and other officers have indicated they never underwent formal training on strip-searches.

Two months ago, as Dickson's lawsuit headed for trial in state Supreme Court, a city apportionment panel whose members include Mayor Jerry Jennings and Treasurer Kathy Sheehan agreed to pay Dickson $15,000 to settle the case. Calabrese said he could not comment because the settlement included a provision that both parties would only acknowledge "the matter has been resolved with no finding or admission of liability."

Dickson, who tries to stay positive at all times, said his experience that day "challenged" his outlook.

"All the time I was there not one person showed me not one moment of respect," he said. "Not once did they treat me like I was a human being. I don't care what they believed."